The razing of the Babri Masjid by a Hindu mob 25 years ago and the riots that followed destroyed my faith in the Indian nation and love for the city of my birth. Though far from the worst tragedy India has faced, it was a defining event for me because I was mature enough by 1992 to absorb its implications.

By way of explaining what I mean by losing faith in the Indian nation, I’ve listed 10 villains of the episode.

Lal Krishna Advani

His chariot traced a bloody path across North India in the autumn of 1990, inflaming communities and triggering riots. He was on a podium overlooking the Babri Masjid on the day of destruction, alongside colleagues like Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti who could not conceal their elation at the success of the plan. Having done more than any other individual to precipitate the demolition, Advani called December 6, 1992, the saddest day of his life. I’m not sure if he was being hypocritical or disingenuous.

PV Narasimha Rao

He was India’s home minister in 1984, directly in charge of the Delhi police and capable of calling in the Army to quell disturbances. But he sat tight as Hindus butchered Sikhs on Delhi’s streets. As prime minister in 1992, he did nothing to prevent the mosque’s destruction, and then claimed to have been betrayed by the Uttar Pradesh state government. Considering it was a BJP government and had won the Uttar Pradesh election vowing to replace the Ayodhya mosque with a Ram temple, Narasimha Rao’s faith in it was absurdly naïve. Since he wasn’t a naïve man, it isn’t unreasonable to suspect his action was dictated less by trust than complicity.

Kalyan Singh

The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who placed a gravely underequipped force to guard a structure he wanted demolished. He got what he wanted and had the ready excuse that he tried his best.

The Shiv Sena

The party directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds in the Bombay riots of January 1993. Its leader, Bal Thackeray, incited violence through the party’s newspaper Saamna, and let slip the dogs of war onto the city’s streets.

Police and security forces

They ran away from kar sevaks in Ayodhya, shot innocent Muslim protestors in Bombay while letting Hindu mobs run amok. All too few tales of police heroism emerged from those dire weeks.

MM Joshi, LK Advani and Uma Bharti.

The Congress party

It ruled the Centre as well as Maharashtra state through 1992 and 1993, and did little to prevent riots from breaking out and not enough to stop them. The state government set up the Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry, whose report indicted specific members of the Shiv Sena and the police force. In future election campaigns, a pledge to implement that incredibly brave report was always part of the Congress manifesto, but nothing was ever done about it in practice.

The criminal justice system

The Liberhan Commission, set up in December 1992 to investigate the mosque demolition, submitted its report in 2009, almost 17 years later. What could possibly explain such dilatoriness?

In October 1993, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed conspiracy charges against 21 individuals, mainly BJP leaders like LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti. The charges were dismissed on technical grounds by the Allahabad High Court in 2011, and restored by a Supreme Court bench earlier in 2017. Eight of the 21 people charged have already died.

Madhukar Sarpotdar, a Shiv Sena leader, was detained by an Army patrol on January 11, 1993. He was in a jeep with his son and other men including a wanted hitman. The jawans found a number of weapons in the vehicle including licensed and unlicensed guns, choppers and hockey sticks. Since Bombay was at that time an area where the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act was in force, carrying unlicensed firearms ought to have meant a minimum of 10 years in jail for the arrested men. Instead, Sarpotdar was booked under a less stringent law, finally sentenced to a year in jail in 2008, and immediately given bail. He died two years later, a free man.

These are only three prominent cases among hundreds in which the justice system failed victims of riots and the Indian constitution.

The Archaeological Survey of India

The ASI was substantially communalised in this period, and adopted Hindutvavadi myths like a link between the Saraswati river and the Indus Valley Civilisation. In the Babri Masjid case, archaeologists claimed to have discovered a Ram temple without even a proper excavation of the site.

The Supreme Court

The original dispute regarding control of the site on which the Babri Masjid stood was in the court for far longer than the demolition conspiracy case. After seven decades in various states of progress or limbo, the matter finally came up before the highest court in the land. The highest judge of that court simply refused to rule on the matter, asking the contending parties to try to resolve the issue amicably. What’s more broken, a system in which cases last longer than the average Indian’s life expectancy, or a system in which the Supreme Court abdicates its responsibility to take tough decisions? No need to pick, we have both.

It is hard to have faith in a nation in which some political parties commit crimes and others are too pusillanimous to take action against them, in which the police and even archaeological institutions display systemic bias, in which courts delay justice endlessly. Above all, it is difficult to have faith in a nation that regularly rewards mass murder.

Growing up, I believed India was special, a nation with a larger symbolic purpose, a leader of countries that had freed themselves from colonial rule and were seeking new kinds of equitable development. December 6, 1992, and what followed jolted me out of that rosy view. India remains special to me, but only because it is the place where I have lived for much of my life, and where most of my family and friends stay. I cannot see it any longer as a beacon, a representative of any form of liberty or equality even in the making. If we did make that tryst with destiny, we haven’t substantially redeemed our pledge, nor are we likely to do so in our lifetimes.

Adopting three simple habits can help maximise the benefits of existing sanitation infrastructure.

India’s sanitation problem is well documented – the country was recently declared as having the highest number of people living without basic sanitation facilities. Sanitation encompasses all conditions relating to public health - especially sewage disposal and access to clean drinking water. Due to associated losses in productivity caused by sickness, increased healthcare costs and increased mortality, India recorded a loss of 5.2% of its GDP to poor sanitation in 2015. As tremendous as the economic losses are, the on-ground, human consequences of poor sanitation are grim - about one in 10 deaths, according to the World Bank.

Poor sanitation contributes to about 10% of the world’s disease burden and is linked to even those diseases that may not present any correlation at first. For example, while lack of nutrition is a direct cause of anaemia, poor sanitation can contribute to the problem by causing intestinal diseases which prevent people from absorbing nutrition from their food. In fact, a study found a correlation between improved sanitation and reduced prevalence of anaemia in 14 Indian states. Diarrhoeal diseases, the most well-known consequence of poor sanitation, are the third largest cause of child mortality in India. They are also linked to undernutrition and stunting in children - 38% of Indian children exhibit stunted growth. Improved sanitation can also help reduce prevalence of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Though not a cause of high mortality rate, NTDs impair physical and cognitive development, contribute to mother and child illness and death and affect overall productivity. NTDs caused by parasitic worms - such as hookworms, whipworms etc. - infect millions every year and spread through open defecation. Improving toilet access and access to clean drinking water can significantly boost disease control programmes for diarrhoea, NTDs and other correlated conditions.

Unfortunately, with about 732 million people who have no access to toilets, India currently accounts for more than half of the world population that defecates in the open. India also accounts for the largest rural population living without access to clean water. Only 16% of India’s rural population is currently served by piped water.

However, there is cause for optimism. In the three years of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the country’s sanitation coverage has risen from 39% to 65% and eight states and Union Territories have been declared open defecation free. But lasting change cannot be ensured by the proliferation of sanitation infrastructure alone. Ensuring the usage of toilets is as important as building them, more so due to the cultural preference for open defecation in rural India.

According to the World Bank, hygiene promotion is essential to realise the potential of infrastructure investments in sanitation. Behavioural intervention is most successful when it targets few behaviours with the most potential for impact. An area of public health where behavioural training has made an impact is WASH - water, sanitation and hygiene - a key issue of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6. Compliance to WASH practices has the potential to reduce illness and death, poverty and improve overall socio-economic development. The UN has even marked observance days for each - World Water Day for water (22 March), World Toilet Day for sanitation (19 November) and Global Handwashing Day for hygiene (15 October).

At its simplest, the benefits of WASH can be availed through three simple habits that safeguard against disease - washing hands before eating, drinking clean water and using a clean toilet. Handwashing and use of toilets are some of the most important behavioural interventions that keep diarrhoeal diseases from spreading, while clean drinking water is essential to prevent water-borne diseases and adverse health effects of toxic contaminants. In India, Hindustan Unilever Limited launched the Swachh Aadat Swachh Bharat initiative, a WASH behaviour change programme, to complement the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Through its on-ground behaviour change model, SASB seeks to promote the three basic WASH habits to create long-lasting personal hygiene compliance among the populations it serves.

This touching film made as a part of SASB’s awareness campaign shows how lack of knowledge of basic hygiene practices means children miss out on developmental milestones due to preventable diseases.

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SASB created the Swachhata curriculum, a textbook to encourage adoption of personal hygiene among school going children. It makes use of conceptual learning to teach primary school students about cleanliness, germs and clean habits in an engaging manner. Swachh Basti is an extensive urban outreach programme for sensitising urban slum residents about WASH habits through demos, skits and etc. in partnership with key local stakeholders such as doctors, anganwadi workers and support groups. In Ghatkopar, Mumbai, HUL built the first-of-its-kind Suvidha Centre - an urban water, hygiene and sanitation community centre. It provides toilets, handwashing and shower facilities, safe drinking water and state-of-the-art laundry operations at an affordable cost to about 1,500 residents of the area.

HUL’s factory workers also act as Swachhata Doots, or messengers of change who teach the three habits of WASH in their own villages. This mobile-led rural behaviour change communication model also provides a volunteering opportunity to those who are busy but wish to make a difference. A toolkit especially designed for this purpose helps volunteers approach, explain and teach people in their immediate vicinity - their drivers, cooks, domestic helps etc. - about the three simple habits for better hygiene. This helps cast the net of awareness wider as regular interaction is conducive to habit formation. To learn more about their volunteering programme, click here. To learn more about the Swachh Aadat Swachh Bharat initiative, click here.

This article was produced by the Scroll marketing team on behalf of Hindustan Unilever and not by the Scroll editorial team.